Three Great Novels (57 page)
Read Three Great Novels Online
Authors: Henry Porter
Tags: #Thrillers, #Action & Adventure, #Fiction
Ignoring the throbbing pain in her arm, Isis began to speak slowly, breathing as calmly as she could. ‘You are aware that we’ve already made inquiries about account 312456787/2, held in the name of David Zachariah. And we’re grateful for your service. First of all, I want you to confirm that the picture I am going to show you is of the man you knew as Zachariah.’ She spun the laptop round on the table.
The three executives leaned forward, two of them reaching in their pockets for reading glasses. They exchanged looks, then one said, ‘That is Mr Zachariah, yes.’
‘Now I’m going to show you some of Mr Zachariah’s associates. ’ She turned the laptop back to her and clicked on the icon for the Bosnia picture. ‘This is not too clear, but I want you to look at it very carefully and see if you recognise anyone.’
Again they huddled round the laptop and squinted at the image. ‘Maybe it would help if you emailed us this picture and we had it enlarged and printed out,’ suggested one.
All this took five or six minutes and eventually a secretary appeared with the copies of the Bosnia photograph, as well as the new Langer picture, which Herrick intercepted and placed face down on the table. As they looked again, she ran through the names she had in her notepad - Larry Langer, Aziz Khalil, Ajami, Latif Latiah and Abdel Fatah.
‘We believe all these men are still at large. We are particularly interested in Langer.’ She turned over the study of Langer, a haunted-looking man in his thirties with sunken eyes and a beard, smiling ruefully at the camera. ‘This man appears in the other picture before you.’
‘Langer, Langer,’ said one of the executives.
‘His people were in the rag trade - the garment industry. It’s close to here, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, we have had dealings with the family.’ He swivelled to a terminal by the wall and turned it on. For some time he worked through the files. ‘Yes,’ he said, pushing himself back so the others could see. ‘Lawrence Joseph Langer. Date of birth, 1969. He had a checking account with us for twelve years, though it was inactive for long periods.’
‘Can you look up Zachariah’s records and see if there are any transactions between the accounts?’ asked Ollins.
‘No problem,’ said the man, printing off the file on Langer.
After a few moments he spoke again. ‘It seems that Mr Langer was in receipt of money from Zachariah on several occasions. But more significant, perhaps, is that Mr Langer also provided a reference when Mr Zachariah set up his account here in the late nineties.’
Ollins had the printout of the Langer account on the table and was going over it with a pen in his hand. He ringed several items.
‘Look at this,’ he said, pointing Herrick to a line which read, ‘Account holder’s address: Room 6410, 350 5th Avenue, New York, NY 10118… Dr Loz’s rooms.’
Over the next hour they turned up two more secrets from the records of Stuyvesant Empire. A search of the name Langer-Ajami produced a business account that had remained at the bank for just eighteen months before being transferred to Lebanon. This stirred the memory of one bank official, a solicitous man with silver hair and a gold pin that pinched his shirt collar together under the tie knot. He said he now remembered interviewing Langer about a carpet import business that was going to sell Turkish rugs and matting in outlets along the east coast.
Another suggestion from Herrick unearthed dealings between accounts held at a bank in Bayswater, London, in the name of the Yaqub Furnishing Company and Yaqub Employment Agency. Herrick explained that these were almost certainly Rahe’s accounts. It was noted that for a period of two years, money had flowed from a real estate company called Drew Al Mahdi to the Yaqub concerns in England. Herrick pointed out that Al Mahdi roughly translated as ‘rightly guided one’ and that this was a phrase used by the Shi’ite community. The bankers all shrugged and said they weren’t familiar with the different sects of Islam, or for that matter Arabic.
By five, Ollins had heard enough. ‘You gentlemen will keep this bank open until we have been over every account here. Is that understood? Because what you have here is nothing less than the funding of a terrorist organisation with your bank at the centre.’ He scooped up all the printouts and copies of photographs and asked for an envelope to put them in. Before leaving, Herrick emailed all the pictures to Ollins at his office so he would have them in electronic form when he returned.
Outside, Ollins made his dispositions on his cell phone, ordering three colleagues into the bank immediately and redeploying others in the Bureau’s state headquarters down at Federal Plaza.
‘You got to understand, this happened on my watch,’ he said to Herrick with a pained expression. ‘You know, we’ve been doing every goddam thing in this city - twenty-four-hour monitoring of suspects’ phone calls, email and internet usage. We’ve monitored their credit card spending, their bank accounts. We pay attention to the people they talk to in the street, what newspapers they read, what their neighbours say. I’m telling you, there’s nothing we haven’t covered in the lives of hundreds of individuals. And then we miss this, for chrissake!’
‘We did too,’ Herrick managed to say, though she was now very short of breath. ‘All the effort was concentrated in Europe.’ All she could now think of was the sense of impending panic that had swamped her in the last few minutes of the meeting. ‘Could we have a drink somewhere? I’m suffering a little from jet lag and a month or so of this bloody case.’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t have the time,’ said Ollins automatically, then he seemed to notice something was wrong. ‘Hey, sure I do. There’s a bar a couple of blocks away. We’ll get you something to drink. Maybe something to eat, too.’ He took her elbow and led her downtown to O’Henry’s Tavern on 38th Street. Above them the sky had darkened into a premature dusk and as they walked big drops of rain began to spatter the sidewalk. There was a pause followed by a sudden rattle of hail on car roofs. Herrick glanced up at the Empire State before they left 5th Avenue and saw lights beginning to dot its massive flanks.
In the bar, she put her hands over her mouth, trying to control the intake of oxygen.
Ollins looked at her, now genuinely concerned. ‘I know what you got. I had it myself a couple of years back.’ She looked at him doubtfully from behind her hands. ‘You got a panic attack,’ he said. ‘You want to know a breathing exercise? ’ He didn’t wait for an answer. ‘Close your eyes. Shut off one nostril and breathe in on the count of four, hold it for twelve with both nostrils closed, then let it out on a count of eight through the nostril you closed at the beginning. Okay?’
She began the exercise forlornly while Ollins ordered a Scotch and a Diet Coke. When the drinks arrived she opened her eyes.
‘Keep going,’ he said, smiling. ‘Do ten rounds. Then I’ll let you talk.’
At length the symptoms began to disappear, although her arms felt weighed down and her legs were still like jelly. She took a sip of the Scotch, shook her head and slapped her cheeks.
‘Listen,’ said Ollins, ‘I know what it’s like. Our line of work, you never relax, you don’t sleep nights, you eat shit and wind up a friggin’ nutcase.’
She nodded as Ollins ran through the connections they had made. At length, she found the energy to press her case on the Empire State.
Ollins hesitated. ‘Sure, why the hell not? What is it exactly you want to see? I mean, we’ve been over the place so many times I lost count, and when we heard Loz had died we sealed the place up.’
‘You never know what’s to be found. I’ve learnt that in this last month. Every wall has something behind it.’
The barman gave them an umbrella someone had left and they ran through the rain, hugging the buildings for shelter. The temperature had fallen dramatically and along the way there were still dirty drifts of hailstones. When they got to the Empire State Ollins pushed past the crowd of tourists lining up to ride eighty-six storeys to the observatory. A security guard intoned, ‘Electric storm. Observation deck closed. Inside viewing area only!’
Inside the lobby, Ollins shook hands with the guards behind the desk and exchanged some words about a Mets signing that day. Then they took the elevator to the sixty-fourth floor. Ollins brushed his hair and flicked droplets of water from his clothes.
‘I gotta tell you,’ he said, ‘I can only be ten to fifteen minutes maximum. I have to get back to the office for a meeting.’
She murmured her understanding and thanked him. The doors opened. Ollins turned left and hurried along a corridor on the north side of the building, the light fabric of his suit flapping as his legs worked. There was no one about, and she heard not so much as a voice or telephone bell from behind the doors they passed. ‘Most of these offices are waiting to be leased,’ he said, gesturing left and right with a flick of his hand. ‘They’re too big or too small or there’s not enough light. Things are tight with the downturn. And this building always feels the draught first. You know it was built just after the crash?’
They came to a door with a plate that read Dr Sammi Loz DO FAAO. Ollins took out a pocket-knife from his belt and selected a small pair of pliers. He cut a wire loop that ran from the handle to a stud on the door jamb. From it hung a notice: FBI LINE - DO NOT CROSS. He turned two keys in the door, pushed and ushered her in. Herrick found herself in a cool, spotlessly clean waiting area with a couch, several chairs and a reception desk.
‘What happened to his receptionist? Did you interview her?’ she asked.
‘Yes, but she wasn’t any help.’
‘Did she know anything about the other part of his life? The deals in TriBeCa done by the Twelver Real Estate Corporation, or for that matter Drew Al Mahdi?’
He shook his head. ‘
W
e didn’t know about any of that when we talked to her, but my guess is she didn’t. She’s your normal single mother from the Bronx. Good-looking, but no college professor.’
W
e didn’t know about any of that when we talked to her, but my guess is she didn’t. She’s your normal single mother from the Bronx. Good-looking, but no college professor.’
‘Can I talk to her?’
‘Yeah. Maybe tomorrow.’
Herrick went through to the consulting rooms. She pushed at a bathroom door and changing room, both of which could be accessed from the reception area, and returned to the room where Loz obviously worked. There was an expensive chair and a maple veneer table, a light box, framed diagrams of human anatomy on the wall and plastic models of the different joints lined up on a shelf. A withered plant stood in the window and some bathroom scales nearby were covered in dust, but otherwise the place looked as if Loz had left half an hour before. She took her mobile from her bag and dialled Harland, ignoring the fact that it was past 11 p.m. in London.
‘I am standing in Loz’s consulting room,’ she said without any preliminaries. ‘Everything looks normal.’
‘Describe it to me,’ he said.
She went through everything she could see and ended by saying, ‘There’s nothing here. And by the way, Eva didn’t appear or call.’
Harland cursed, but she couldn’t hear him because Ollins was saying he really had to leave. ‘Hold on a moment would you? Frank Ollins is here and would like a word.’
Ollins took the phone. ‘I hear you got shot up, buddy. That explains why you sent a woman over to do your work. Get better. I want to see those wrists cuffed when you come back to New York.’ He handed it back to her.
Harland said. ‘The bed! Isis, you didn’t mention the treatment bed in his room. There was a really sophisticated adjustable bed. Levers all over the place.’
‘Well, there isn’t one.’
‘That’s odd. There has to be.’ said Harland. ‘What about the Arabic inscription on the wall, the one that says something about a man who is noble doesn’t pretend to be noble.’
‘There’s nothing of that sort, no.’
‘This could be important,’ said Harland. ‘Find out if Ollins has removed anything and call me back.’
Ollins shook his head. ‘There was nothing to take, Everything that was here
is
here.’
is
here.’
‘What about the treatment bed in the consulting room?’
Ollins shrugged. ‘I don’t know about that but I can’t delay my meeting because a goddam bed’s missing.’
‘And the computer, is that working? It might be worth going through it.’
‘I have to go,’ he said.
‘But I can stay and bring the keys back to you later? Federal Plaza, right? Look, I have helped you, haven’t I? I’m at the Algonquin. You have my number. I’m not going to steal anything. ’
He thought for a moment. ‘Okay, but have them back to me by morning. And call me on the cell when you leave this evening. I’ll tell the guards in the lobby.’
With that he bade her goodbye and hurried through the door, letting it swing shut behind him.
Herrick walked to the window and looked down through the rain at the traffic crawling along 5th, aware of the unearthly solitude and detachment of the building. It rose above things, she thought, literally and metaphorically. She felt the weight of its presence.
Now utterly calm, she turned on the computer and for half an hour or so went through Loz’s appointments diary, making notes. She spotted the initials RN, and concluded this was Ralph Norquist because of Loz’s visit to RN on May 13. She also found BJ - Benjamin Jaidi.
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